Page 128 of The Third Baseman

Her chest caught, and her pulse quickened. I knew she’d heard.

“Star?”

She spun around to face me. “Jupe, stop talking and kiss me.”

My heart cracked.

I didn’t say a word as I pulled her underneath me, crushing my lips to hers, surrounding her, bruising us.

One last time.

* * *

MARNIE

“I’m getting really worried about her. It’s been a week. I think she needs to go to the doctor.”

“I’m going to murder that kid.”

I raised my head just enough to hear the muffled voices outside my room. But it wasn’t Jupiter, so I laid it back on the pillow and pulled the comforter over my head to block out the light creeping through the blinds.

Maybe if I was quiet enough, the voices would vanish.

Maybe if I was quiet enough, I would vanish.

Then the pain would stop.

I would hit the bottom of the black hole I seemed to be tumbling down.

If I hit the bottom, perhaps the sensation would come back to my limbs; the emptiness I felt deep in my marrow would refill; the numbness would disappear; my body wouldn’t feel like it was being ripped in half.

I would no longer be shrouded in the darkness I’d lived in for seven whole days.

The never-ending tears would stop falling.

My last thought as exhaustion took me; death must be easier than this.

19

JUPITER

Present Day

“But my birthday isn’t for two weeks…”

I kissed her nose on my way to the kitchen. “I know, but we’ll be traveling, and I don’t have another free day until after it. And then it’s the All Star Game, and we’ll be back in L.A.”

She popped her hip, her elbow crooked. “Are you at least going to tell me where we’re going?”

“The Polo Bar.”

That got her attention. She pushed her glasses up onto her head. “How did you know?”

Pulling her toward me, I rested my arms on her shoulders. “I asked Lowe and Beulah if there’s anywhere you’d been talking about. I wish I’d known sooner; I can always get a table there. I did seven years of campaigns for Ralph Lauren.”

There was that look again. It always took me a second to remember that she knew nothing of my life between when we were kids and up to a few months ago. Years and years of my face being plastered on billboards; stuck between the pages of magazines; spread over the sports pages; not to mention the award ceremonies, exclusive interviews and television appearances, along with dozens of social media accounts dedicated to me – she’d missed it all.

Marnie had taken herself to the only place where it was possible to escape me, or as close as…

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